


In What Furnace Was Thy Brain?

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Puns, Flash Season 1 Fix-It, Gen, Incorrect Diagnosis of Mental Illness, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 12:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9440210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Yes, this time Len will admit his plan had been really stupid.(Prompt: Coldwave AU, where Len was burgling STAR Labs when the accelerator blew up - and thus he ended up merged with Stein as Firestorm.)





	

Len’s bored, and being bored, he looks for something to do.

Mick would call this the Most Dangerous of moods, comparing it to his own impulses towards pyromania, the point where the itching under his skin has gotten to the point where something needs to be on fire and anything will do. This is when Mick starts trying to distract Len, keep him busy, so that his brain won’t seize on the first, worst thing to do.

But Mick’s not here right now.

That’s presumably why he picks up a newspaper at the newstand about the Particle Accelerator being opened up and goes “I’m going to rob that.”

After all, when everyone’s eyes are going to be fixed on Wells, Wells’ eyes aren’t going to be fixed on all the interesting tech prototypes he keeps in the back parts of his labs.

Unsurprisingly, like all of Len’s absolute worst ideas, it goes sideways almost immediately.

Breaking in is easy enough: service entrance to the gigantic ring of the Accelerator itself, a forgotten worker’s tunnel that wasn’t closed all the way, and from there into the back part of the lab. Len’s figuring on staying there while they turn the Accelerator on, stowing the take somewhere, then sneaking out with the gigantic crowd up front before coming back after everyone’s already discovered the theft and stopped looking for it.

He’s gotten inside, no problem, and he’s even made it to the labs with the prototypes – so many prototypes, many with helpful labels in someone called CR’s handwriting – to start looking for the goods, but there’s a noise. Just a whisper.

Len didn’t get to be this good a thief by ignoring his instincts, so he hides himself in one of the labs.

A hand mirror shows him the main hallway without revealing the whites of his eyes.

There’s a faint crackle of sound and the scent of – ozone? Like lightning? – and a man appears at the other end of the hallway. Len didn’t see him approach. 

Must be the angle of the mirror.

The guy walks over and hits wall, which slides open. He ducks inside. Maybe five minutes later, he walks back out, door sliding shut again.

Secret doorway. That’s _got_ to have some cool tech stuff hidden away.

Len grins, but he doesn’t head out immediately. The guy – tall, dark hair, Caucasian, probably works here – did appear out of basically nowhere, after all; and if there’s one secret door there may be secret passages. 

He waits about ten minutes to be sure the coast is clear. The roaring of the crowd outside is helpful as a guide: the presentation has definitely started.

Len’s barely started to head back to the lab’s tech stash when the alarms start blaring. 

Top volume, too; that doesn’t sound promising. He was pretty sure there were, like, ten variations of “don’t worry, it’s 100% safe” in the newspaper.

Looks like someone miscalculated.

Abruptly, some guy – tall, kinda muscular – runs into the hallway at full speed, passing right by Len without so much as a glance at him, heading inside the Accelerator and yelling something along the lines of “if I don’t get out, you’ve got to close the door! Promise me, Cisco!” over his shoulder.

Well, that’s some serious Apollo 13 stuff right there.

Len plays a hunch and follows him into the actual Accelerator. If there are alarms going off, his plan of stealing things from the labs isn’t going anywhere anyway, so he may as well figure out what’s gone wrong. 

“What are you doing?” Len asks the guy.

“How’d you get in – no, I don’t care, hold this,” the guy says. “There’s something wrong with the Accelerator. It’s about to blow.”

“Blow as in –”

“ _Blow_.”

“Shit,” Len says. This is why Mick vetoes his dumber ideas.

He should go _now_.

“I’m going to try to adjust the inside to make it explode upwards,” the guy says. “It’ll still be bad, dark matter’s going to go everywhere, but we won’t – it won’t decimate the surrounding area.”

“I don’t want this city decimated, even in part,” Len says, because that’s just _no_. “What can I do to help?”

“Like this –”

About four minutes in, the guy says, “My name’s Ronnie. Ronnie Raymond. You?”

“Leonard Snart,” Len says, too focused on rewiring the relevant sequence to think of one of his alibis. “Like this?”

“Yes! Just like that, perfect!” 

“Great,” Len says. “Now let’s get out of here before _we_ blow up.”

Ronnie checks his watch. “It’s too late,” he says grimly. “By the time we get there, Cisco will be locking the door –”

“Screw the door,” Len says, and drags him towards the worker’s exit.

The Accelerator is starting up.

This is the stupidest plan Len’s ever made, and he’s glad, perversely, that Mick isn’t here, even if every single day since the fire he’s woken up willing to give his liver in exchange for seeing him again, because at least if Mick’s angry at him somewhere, Mick’s not here. Mick’s not going to die with him.

Because Ronnie has a fiancée he’s mentioned like three times now, and he’s going to get married and be happy and have a purpose in life that isn’t just aimlessly chasing adrenaline high after adrenaline high as if it can make up for the gaping hole in his side where he left his husband and partner behind.

Len glances behind him.

The sparks are starting.

“Hey, Ronnie,” he says as they get to the door.

“What?” Ronnie gasps, prying the door open. The whistling is so loud that it’s hard to hear him. There’s something whirling above their head and it’s coming down towards them at full blast.

“Good luck with your girl,” Len says, and shoves him through.

The next wave hits Len dead in the chest, and Len has just enough time to think, “I guess that’s all she wrote –” before he’s gone.

And then he’s gone.

Gone.

Not gone?

The first few months are – 

He’s not sure. 

He’s not entirely _there_.

He walks and he falls and sometimes he flies and he doesn’t entirely know what’s going on; everything’s confused, he just gets flashes of strange things – 

Math formulas he never learned –

Heists he barely recalled that he remembered –

Technology that he was sure died out before his time –

Mick –

_Clarissa_ –

He doesn’t even _know_ a Clarissa –

He doesn’t know how long it is before his brain starts actually recording what’s going on around him instead of just experiencing it.

He wakes up in a bed made of boxes.

He lifts his head.

“Hey, hey,” a woman’s voice says, sounding calming. He looks at her. She’s thirty, homeless. Unclean hair, circles under her eyes, puffy cheeks, several layers of coats. There’s a blanket over her legs from where she’s been sleeping not far from him.

_Who is that girl?_

That’s not his voice.

He opens his mouth, but he can’t speak. The thoughts are gone, the words are garbled.

It’s like two sets of words are trying to come out of his mouth at once.

“Relax, babe, it’s cool,” she says.

_It’s not cool, it’s Cold_ , he thinks.

That one was him. Cold’s his prison nickname, Hot and Cold for Mick and him; he’d developed a fondness for temperature-themed puns since then. 

“You want some food?” she asks. “Or some more sleep?”

_I demand you tell me where I am at once! And – good lord, what am I wearing –_

I need to know where I am and how long and –

His hand is on fire.

Is his hand on fire?

_My hands are on fire! My head is on fire!_

No.

Not fire.

Fire is Mick, the fire _took Mick_ , the fire took him and tried to eat him and Mick stayed with the fire instead of coming with him –

_I don’t know a Mick._

Of course you know Mick! What sort of universe would it be if he didn’t know Mick, if he –

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh, wait.

He knows this.

He knows –

Damnit, if he could only think; this is something to do with Mick, some diagnosis someone had suggested which had been wrong, wrong, wrong, but he remembers reading up on the symptoms just in case, the symptoms, something with the brain, something –

If he could only _think_ –

He forces his mind to be quiet, just closes his eyes, rocking back and forth a bit, focusing on blank-blank-blank, white sheet of paper – _formulas_ – no, white, white snow, white empty snow like in the mountains they went once – _skiing is delightful this time of year_ – he’s never been skiing, skiing is for yuppies – _I beg your pardon_ – goddamnit, think of the white snow, just the snow, nothing but the snow – 

His mind slowly stills, and the words finally can come.

“Psychotic,” he forces through numb lips. “First break. Late –”

The buzz in the back of his mind gets louder; he ignores it.

“Late onset,” he manages to say. “Late onset – schizophrenia. Hearing voices. Disordered thinking.”

_Actually, I must admit, that makes a certain amount of sense._

“Man, that sucks,” the woman says. “But still, you’ve been, like, catatonic for ages; this has got to be a step forward, right? You take some bad shit or something?”

_I don’t do drugs._

That was weirdly in chorus or something.

“No,” he finally says aloud. It’s weirdly easier when the voices and the memories and everything drowning him seem to be in agreement. And then – “How long?”

“No idea, man,” the woman tells him regretfully. Her name’s Jaz; he remembers her telling him that over soup. They had soup yesterday; she fed him. Jaz and Rashid and Josh and Aryeh and Fatima; they were all homeless and they’d seen him with his vacant eyes and starving cheeks and sleeping where he fell, and they saw kin – they’d brought him to their boxes and let him sleep there with them, and they fed him when they had something to spare. “Fatima found you first, but you already looked pretty ragged. You know where you were when it started?”

He can’t even remember his own _name_.

He knows that there’s a Mick somewhere, or maybe he doesn’t; he knows there’s a Clarissa who’s worried, or maybe he doesn’t, but damnit, his brain just isn’t _responding_.

Disordered thinking is quite common in untreated schizophrenia. Hallucinations, too – that explains how he’d felt certain that his hands and his head were on fire. 

He needs a way to tell time that doesn’t involve a stop or a finish.

_In physics –_

Fuck physics. 

He raises his hand up to his head.

Shit, his hair’s nearly an inch and a half long, maybe two inches; he can feel it starting to curl like a crazy person. It does that every time, so he normally keeps it clipped – that’s half an inch – and the average person grows half an inch of hair every month.

So, two months, maybe three. 

_That was quite clever._

Yeah, it really was, wasn’t it? 

That’s why he’s won all those awards.

…he’s never won an award in his life.

Great, the delusions have started.

He needs to get treatment. 

_Most definitely._

There are pills for this. Cognitive therapy. Plenty of things. 

_That would be helpful. And we need to get away from these homeless people – they’re certainly not going to help, and they might be a danger. Or in danger from me, for that matter._

They’re homeless people. They don’t have to help, but they did; they helped keep me alive. They’re perfectly capable of determining the level of danger they’re comfortable with here.

_If that were true, they wouldn’t be homeless._

No need to be fucking classist about it. There are so many reasons you can become homeless.

_…perhaps it was a bit of a hasty judgment._

Besides, I’m pretty damn white-passing, at least until my hair starts going crazy. What sort of moron helps a mentally ill white man? That’s the most dangerous creature on earth. Look at the statistics.

_I beg your pardon! That’s hardly true!_

Great. So now I’m an idiot. No one ever said anything about spontaneously developing narrow-minded privilege when you got sick. 

_I am – good lord, I’m arguing to myself about identity politics. I must be –_

Don’t say ‘crazy’. 

_Fine. Schizophrenic. That seems like a reasonable explanation; it’s supposed to come on rather abruptly, isn’t it?_

Yeah, but there’s treatment.

_I should obtain treatment as quickly as possible._

Right, so treatment. Number one on the To Do list.

_And finding Clarissa._

Who the hell is Clarissa?

Images swim sickeningly before his face: a woman, young, vivacious, smiling; eyes glowing under her veil on their wedding day, lips curled up like she had a secret smile; hair tossed over her shoulder as she laughs, bringing in dinner and kissing him on the cheek as he worked on the whiteboard – 

None of that has ever happened to him. For fucks’ sake, he might appreciate the occasional woman or two, he might even accept that somewhere lost in his memory he might marry one – green card, maybe? A dare? At threat of a gun? – but a _whiteboard_? That’s just right out. 

Jaz puts a bottle of water in front of his lips and he drinks gratefully. He’s sat back down sometime; he’s not sure where. 

Right, right. He needs to think about getting treatment. A shrink.

_I do not need a shrink!_

Yes, you really do. I really do. Whatever.

_…I will concede in this situation it appears to be reasonable to consult with one._

Geez, thanks muchly. When did I become such an arrogant snot?

_That’s rude._

I’m rude!

_I don’t want to get involuntarily committed._

I’ll use a fake name and break out if they do. Sheesh, stop worrying.

_I can break out of places?_

I’ve broken out of plenty before. It’s like breaking in, but less tedious.

_I don’t remember being able to do that._

Well, you don’t remember _Mick_ , so you’re clearly from the damaged part of my brain.

_I beg your pardon! You don’t remember_ Clarissa _; you cannot possibly be the symptoms of a sane mind –_

“Hey, buddy, you good?” Jaz asks. Fatima and Josh have returned and the three of them are crowding around him. His head’s on fire again, but his hands aren’t, so he pushes himself up.

“Thanks for your help,” he says, because that’s nice and polite, and they have taken care of him. “I need to find –”

Help.

_Clarissa_.

Mick.

“– something.”

“You do you, man,” Josh says, but his eyes are worried.

“We’ll be here to take you in if you need to,” Fatima says. “It’s getting cold again.”

“There’s a house on Maple Street that’s always empty, the third one down from the stoplight,” he says. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he’s sure it’s true. “You could stay there, if it snows.”

They look surprised, but pleased. “It ain’t Family, is it?” Josh asks.

“No,” he says. He’s sure of that much. “No, not Family. Freelance.”

_Freelance what?_

I don’t know.

I miss Mick. He’d know.

_Who is Mick?_

We need to find him.

_We need to find Clarissa. She’ll be worried._

Mick first.

_Mick doesn’t even want to see you. Clarissa wants to see me._

Fuck you.

_Please. I just want to see her._

Fuck, I'm a bleeding heart. Just stick a shiv in my heart, will you?

_Shiv? Good lord, is that_ prison slang?

He has no idea what else it would be if not prison slang.

Oh, shit, his head’s on fire again.

Maybe it’s some sort of metaphor?

_It could be a metaphor. But for what?_

Fuck if I know. Leaving Mick to the flames? 

_That sounds like a bad thing._

It was. He needed me and I left him behind because he picked the flames over me, and now he hates me and doesn’t want to see me and it’s terrible because I feel empty, like a vat that’s been all poured out.

_I don’t think I did anything like that._

What about Clarissa? You didn’t tell her where you were going. She probably thinks you’re _dead_.

_Maybe I did do something terrible, then. But why the fire? I’m Jewish; I don’t buy into Christian symbolism._

Yeah, I know. Never have, even if I’m not the most religious Jew. Hard to avoid the Christian imagery everywhere, though, ain’t it? And there was Hannukah. I remember Hannukah was coming up.

_Yes, Hannukah. We were going to celebrate, Clarissa and I, but I left because – I don’t remember any more._

I wasn’t celebrating, I don’t think.

_Are you my past self? Some younger equivalent of me?_

Shit, maybe. Is schizophrenia associated with amnesia? Am I actually super old? Did Mick die and I replaced him with someone called Clarissa?

_No, I don’t think I ever knew a Mick. Maybe I’ve forgotten him?_

That’s unlikely. You don’t _forget_ someone like Mick.

“Hey! Buddy! Hey!” Fatima is shouting in his face. 

“Sorry,” he says automatically.

“You wanna come with us?” Jaz asks. “We’re going to try to find that place on Maple; we’d be happy to have you, you can point it out.”

“No,” he says. “I need to go. Thank you for your help.”

“If you’re sure,” Josh says.

“You took care of me,” he says firmly. “Thanks.”

“No need for thanks,” Fatima says. “You kept us warm.”

He nods. Not sure why they’d need the extra body heat, but sure. In the winter, the more the merrier, he guesses.

Is it still winter? No – gotta be March, sometime. Last burst of winter before spring. 

_Clarissa will be celebrating Purim. It was always her favorite._

They end up on a street somewhere in the suburbs. There’s an older woman in there, still beautiful in her way.

He’s never seen her before.

No.

That’s not right, he _has_. They’ve been here before, looking from a distance, catatonic and blank, but still watching.

Have they –

A memory rips out of the back of his mind, drifts to the surface. 

Mick kept turning around to try to see him, but he’d kept back, kept to the dark. He’d looked – not good, he was burned all over, but it looked like they’d mostly healed up, and he had mobility. His eyes were bright and clear. He still looked like _Mick_. That was good. 

He’d been loading a truck. Grunt work. No one ever appreciated Mick’s qualities, no one but him; they all underestimated Mick, either because Mick wanted them to or because they just didn’t understand how good he was, how skilled, how clever, all because he was sick and because he was violent and because he didn’t have smarts the way they thought of them –

_He seems like quite a brute._

You take that fucking back!

He punches himself in the face a few times, hard as he can make himself do it, just to make the point stick, until even the voice in his head is yowling for mercy. 

His nose is bleeding, his eye is swelling, but the voice says, _I won’t say it again_ , and that’s worth anything. 

They back away from Clarissa’s window.

_We should probably go to temple for Purim._

We should get _drunk_ for Purim. Religious requirement.

_Maybe not in our current state._

Yeah, that’s a good point. Good one, hallucination.

_I am not the hallucination! You are!_

Pssht. I bet that’s what all the hallucinations say.

_I am_ not _a hallucination._

Let’s go find Mick again. 

_We don’t know where he is._

We tracked him the first few times, and we were _catatonic_. Also, stop saying ‘we’, it’s I. Just me in this body. I’m not suffering from dissociated identity disorder.

Wait, am I?

_Damned if I know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the softer sciences, but then again, I never imagined it would be relevant to my life. It’s not called multiple personalities anymore?_

No, they updated the book. I think.

_Oh, that’s helpful! Now we know exactly what type of insane we are!_

We’re not insane. I. _I’m_ not insane. Schziophrenia’s nothing more than a mental disorder, which can be handled with appropriate treatment; you shouldn’t make value judgments –

Huh, look at that, his hands and head are on fire again. They seem to do that a lot.

_We – sorry, I – should keep track of the pattern. Perhaps it is associated with some emotion?_

They – _he_ , damnit, even though it’s increasingly easier to think as a ‘they’ – walk through the streets. The fire seemed associated with anger or other strong emotions, but they could force it in or out. They couldn’t keep the illusion for that long, though.

Oddly, that seemed to be the only visual hallucination.

Neither of them wanted to look in a mirror, because one of them was right – forty but strong, salt-and-pepper hair and blue-eyes, or old and white-haired, brown-eyed and glasses – and the other one didn’t want to know if they were the delusion, as they were both pretty sure they were the right one.

“Hey!” someone calls. “Wait!”

Oh, great, it’s the guy that’s been chasing them. 

Neither of them remember exactly, but the memory floods forth clear as lightning: the man who’s been looking for him, looking everywhere, following their traces, and they’ve been avoiding him, even while mostly catatonic and running on instinct. Well, no reason to change now.

They duck into an alley, but he follows. They fly to the roof and hide there.

_Did we just fly?_

We totally just flew. How did we do that?

_I don’t know!_

You’re the delusion! You tell me!

_Don’t start that again. Perhaps it was part of the delusion, that we flew?_

No, I think we’re really on this rooftop right now. The fire just came out of our hands, Iron Man style, and we…flew. That was pretty cool. Maybe we actually just climbed the side of the building and _thought_ that we flew?

_We should try it again._

What, and risk having it shut off halfway through?

_Good point. Perhaps we should try again, but once we are closer to the ground. Who is the young man following us, anyway?_

Not sure. He’s not Mick.

_No, we’ve established Mick. Isn’t there anyone else for you?_

Lisa.

_Who’s Lisa?_

My sister, you dumbass!

_Oh. My brother died in a car accident when I was a child._

I don’t – you know what, let’s not get into that again.

_I most fervently agree._

So who’s this guy? He looks familiar.

_Distantly, yes. An employee, perhaps?_

Nah, he’s not a criminal.

_I worry when you say things like that. No, he’s not one of mine – someone else's. Wells._

Wells?

_Yes, the name is familiar – I was going to see him –_

Wait. I remember – the Particle Accelerator. Harrison Wells.

_That’s the one!_

I saw him there. And in the newspaper, right before.

_Yes._

And this guy – I saw him, too. He was in the Accelerator. I pushed him out.

_So it’s your fault he’s hunting us down._

How’s it my fault?

_No doubt he wishes to thank you._

That’s dumb. You don’t thank people for shit like that, certainly not by stalking them through the city; you pay it forward, somehow.

_So you have some philosophy after all._

Yeah, yeah. It’s just common sense.

_Hmm. I think he’s gone._

I wanna go see Mick again.

_Let’s do that, then. After we eat something._

I’ll break into the local bodega.

_Couldn’t we have something more substantive than chips today?_

I’ll grab some Ramen. Stop whining. 

_Words cannot express the depth of my joy at the thought of eating microwaved noodles in a cheap Styrofoam cup. Which I’ve stolen, let me not forget._

I’ll break into a Family-owned Italian restaurant and have some pasta next to the bags of cocaine, how about I do that instead, huh?

_Ramen is fine._

Time passes in fits and starts.

They watch Clarissa, who cries, sometimes, alone in her living room where she thinks no one is looking, late at night.

They hunt Mick, who is becoming increasingly more paranoid that someone is following him. He works shit jobs, dumb muscle, intimidation; he deserves better. At least he doesn’t get arrested. 

Clarissa goes to work and pretends to smile.

Mick lights a house on fire and stays to watch it far too long, but they call the fire department before he burns with it, and he runs when he hears the sirens. They run, too.

Fly, actually. They keep thinking they can do that. 

Visual hallucination number two.

He clips his hair again, so they have a way of keeping time, but sometimes he blinks and finds that he doesn’t know where the last few weeks have gone. He sometimes goes to stay with Jaz and Fatima and Josh and the others in the house on Maple, which they’ve turned into an informal artist’s collective-slash-shelter. 

They debate visiting Mick’s shrink, and finally do. The pills just make him sick, really sick, and they don’t seem to help at all, so after a month they stop taking them.

After some debate.

He’s never debated himself this much in his _life_.

They avoid Ronnie and his concerned wife, Caitlin, who works at STAR Labs and who he talks to on the phone a lot; Ronnie is very earnest and very enthusiastic and he believes that his life was saved by the mysterious man he is hunting.

He’d say that he doesn’t know who in their right mind thinks that stalking someone down is a good way to thank them for their life, but in view of his visits to Clarissa’s home and Mick’s safehouses, maybe they don’t have room to judge.

He’s still not sure where he came up with Clarissa. He only knows she means a lot to him.

The fire hallucinations continue ceaselessly. Hand, head, sometimes the soles of his feet. 

Sometimes he touches things and they become _other_ things. He literally turns water into wine once, which is just funny, though the fact that he can even taste the wine when he drains the water bottle stinks of a worsening mental state.

Their second attempts to get pills for their problem doesn’t work any better than the first.

They start experimenting with their hallucinations, which are at least very consistent. Sure, they’re mentally unbalanced, but as the voice in his head puts it, that doesn’t mean they can’t be _scientific_ about it. After all, when else would they get such an opportunity to explore it from the inside?

It’s interesting, though it’s not entirely enough to erase the sense of loss of their real life.

He wishes he could go to Clarissa, or to Mick, to explain, to ask for help, but he knows how dangerous untreated schizophrenics can be. He knows how dangerous _he_ can be.

_I don’t remember killing quite so many people. Or – anyone at all, actually._

It gets easier after the first one.

_Does it really?_

No.

_Oh._

My first one, I was nine. My dad told me to shoot a man, execution style. I stood too close and the blood and brains got all over me. I threw up afterwards, snotted up crying like a baby.

_I’m…terribly sorry._

Dad nearly broke my wrist kicking my ass after that. He said I shouldn’t have cried.

_Your father is awful._

Yeah, I know, right? You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to accept that.

_The worst my father ever did was make me go to rabbinical school before finally permitting me to focus on physics and chemistry._

I never even graduated high school.

_One of us is a startling well-developed delusion._

No kidding. I always thought it was exaggerated in the movies, how it was basically two totally different people, personalities, histories, that sort of thing.

_For me as well! It always seemed so absurd; surely it wasn’t actually like that. I suppose my karma has repaid my hubris several times over by giving me you._

At least there’s only two of us.

_Don’t frighten me. I can only handle one of you._

Back at you. I wish I weren’t schizophrenic. Assuming this is schizophrenia, which I'm starting to doubt.

_I wish for many things._

Yeah. Clarissa. 

_Mick._

I don’t think I appreciated Clarissa enough, assuming your version of my life is correct. She’s so funny and smart, and she always seems to know how to get me back on track.

_Yes, she is. You’re right. I should have appreciated her more when I had the chance. And assuming you were correct, there was Mick –_

I didn’t appreciate him enough.

_No, you did. I did. I really did. I loved him, and I saved him just as he saved me. But I – you – whichever one of us. We should have gone back to him, after the fire. He wanted you to._

He hated me.

_He still loves you._

He’s not missing me the way Clarissa’s missing you.

_He doesn’t know you’re missing._

No, he does. I think Lisa told him. I always check in with her, even if I’m in prison.

_Why didn’t you this year?_

Same reason as with Mick. She’d be in danger from me.

Memories drift up to them, memories of Lisa, of their childhood. Not good memories. 

_You’re not your father, you know._

No. But I’m not taking the chance, either. 

_Yes. I suppose not._

They watch as Central starts to become…strange.

“A streak?” he asks, frowning at Jaz who waves the blog page she printed out from the library in his face. “Fighting a – multiple man? Is this a joke?”

_Or a tabloid._

“Or a tabloid?”

“No!” she says. “It’s real. I swear. I saw the streak myself, just the other day; moved faster than you could see, but definitely there. Bright red, lightning, the whole works.”

Out of morbid curiosity, he uses Aryeh’s computer – he’s the only one who has one, a used one he fished out a dumpster and repaired and now leeches wifi where he can – to hack into the traffic cameras.

“I didn’t know you could do that. Can you do that? Is that legal?” Aryeh asks Rashid.

“No. Definitely not,” Rashid says. “That is _very_ illegal. Buddy, what are you even doing?”

He hushes them both. 

“You can’t find the Streak like that,” Jaz says archly. She has the same nasal drawl as the rest of them: Central City slums, the accent that sneaks in to everyone’s voice eventually if they spend enough time in the bad parts of town. He suspects that’s one of the reasons they accepted him into their group, in the beginning: what few words he stuttered out identified him as part of the extend family of slum-dwellers. “It’s too fast.”

“He,” he says.

“What?”

“He. The Streak is a man,” he tells them, his eyes still fixed on the screen, where’s he’s paused the streak just enough to identify a hand, an arm.

A man who can move at super-speed. He could stop him, with a little technical help - something cold to slow him down – he could –

He could spasm and flail because his movements have stopped responding to him again, that’s what he could do. It always felt incredibly bizarre when that happened – as if his brain were sending two sets of instructions at the same time, one moving one way, the other another, but it never worked. 

He can’t fight a speedster this way.

He sighs in regret.

_Why would you want to_ fight _him? He’s done nothing to you, and I must say, you’ve already fought plenty of people._

Listen, when people first found Mount Everest, do you think they said ‘oh, I’ve already climbed plenty of mountains, and this one’s done nothing to me’? That’s not how it works.

_Adrenaline junkie._

Stop sounding so dismissive about yourself.

_I never knew I was so brave before you._

Trust your subconscious.

_Hah! Not in a million years. Regardless of which one of us is the ‘right’ one, I think we’ve both learned a very important lesson about not trusting our subconscious._

Yeah, well, my subconscious is apparently manifested in a stubborn, snobby old physic professor with an occasional daredevil streak.

_I do not have a daredevil streak._

I wasn’t the one who threw us off a building to see if we could learn to fly faster that way.

_It worked!_

It was still stupid.

_Well, yes…_

Turns out they’re not the only ones watching the Streak. Not the only ones thinking.

Mick’s been tearing through all the safehouses they’ve both had for the last few months, almost as if he’s looking for something –

_He’s looking for you._

Well, he can’t find me. I won’t _let_ him.

– and Mick knows him too well. Too well, too well. He looks at the Streak and he goes: I know who would like to fight that. 

I know who would stand at the foot of Mount Everest and say, “Hell yes, I’m going to climb that.”

“Someone’s fighting the Streak!” Jaz exclaims. “And he’s got a gun that shoots _fire_ and someone’s already called the media, says the guy’s name is Heatwave!”

“Heatwave?” he asks, frowning, and goes to look at the television.

That’s Mick.

_That’s Mick._

Shit! 

_You have to stop him. Fire is a useful weapon against a speedster, based on our assumptions regarding cell regrowth and enhanced metabolism –_

But you need to be slow and cold if you really want to fight a speedster, I know, I know! He’s going to lose, and thus far, no one’s ever seen the people the Streak fights ever again. We need to find something – there’s no way to get liquid nitrogen on such a short time frame –

They rifle through their memory together, physics and crime and academia and street-slang all meshing together in a horrific mess which they both bemoaned as the destruction of their carefully ordered minds.

_The cold gun – STAR Labs! You saw it when you were snooping, right before the Accelerator exploded –_

It wasn’t finalized.

_With a speedster on the loose? I’m certain STAR Labs would have finalized it by now._

On my way now. Please don’t – whatever you do.

_I’ll do my best not to interfere._

Mick snarls on the television, the speedster having hit him quick as lightning, and they grab one of the illegal guns they bought for the artist’s collective when the Family started knocking and they run to the window and they leap and they _fly_. 

He remembers studying the blueprints of STAR Labs. 

It has roof access.

He’s not even questioning if this is a hallucination or not; he doesn’t care. He needs to get to the cold gun.

No one’s guarding anything at STAR Labs anymore, and the cold gun is easy to find. He grabs it and heads back up. He’s not going to let the Streak hurt Mick, he’s not, he’s not, he’s not – no more than he could let anyone hurt Clarissa –

He hears the sound of a fight from the other room, coming as if through a speaker, then a loud _whoosh_.

“I have him,” a young man’s voice says proudly. “I mean, ouch on the burns, but they’re already healing. Sorry about the suit, Cisco.”

“Why do you keep hurting my baby like this?” another young man, presumably ‘Cisco’ asks plaintively, then his tone changes. “But still: Heatwave! Our very first non-meta villain!”

“What do we do with him?” an anxious-sounding young woman says. “Should we put him in the Accelerator with the others? Or do we just drop him off at the police?”

“He’s discovered Barry’s identity, or at least that Barry is the Flash,” a low, mellow voice, male, older than the rest, says. “That’s the nickname you prefer, right, Barry?”

“Yeah,” the first young man says. “The Flash is _so_ much better than the Streak. So you think we should keep him?”

“At least for now,” the older man says smoothly. “We can work out some sort of transfer system one the threat of metahumans isn’t looming over the city.”

_That’s illegal._

No kidding, that’s illegal. That’s illegal imprisonment, failure to obey due process, keeping vital information from the masses, which don’t even _know_ that metahumans are definitely a thing – 

“Rory’s dangerous,” another voice, also older, also male, cuts in. “I agree with Dr. Wells in this case. He’s escaped Iron Heights before. I’m not sure we can risk him getting out again and telling everyone about you guys here.”

“Let me go,” Mick slurs. He’s been knocked out, but he’s reviving; it’s evident from his voice.

“Shit, he’s waking up,” Cisco yelps. “Put him in the Accelerator, Barry; I’ll open up another tube –”

You ready?

_I supposed I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Go get them._

He takes a deep breath and pulls the fire inside his skin. He won’t be able to keep it that way long, but maybe long enough.

Then he marches into the room and fires the cold gun right at the one dressed in red. 

He gets them by surprise, all of them, and the one in red, whose cowl is pulled back and who is just a young man after all, the speedster himself, is covered from toe to torso. He memorizes the face – he’ll hack Facebook and find him if he has to after this, for leverage – and he snarls, “Get your hands off of my partner.”

A black man pulls out his gun. “Stop!” he shouts. “Police.”

He turns the cold gun on him.

“Joe! Don’t let it touch you!” the Flash calls in a panic, and the policeman dives behind a table when the bolt of blue flame comes towards him.

“It’s Leonard Snart!” the policeman shouts. “Rory’s old partner!”

“I thought you said they didn’t work together anymore!” Cisco yells from where he’s dived behind a desk. The young woman has grabbed the other man in the room, an older man in a wheelchair, and carted him behind a glass door.

The older man’s eyes glitter in anger, though. Not fear.

_He’s unable to use his legs, but he’s not afraid, not at all. That’s strange; the Wells I knew was a reasonable man, and quite cautious with his life. He’s hiding something._

Possibly a weapon. Keep an eye on him. 

_Right._

“I’m stuck!” Barry shouts. 

“Vibrate fast enough to melt it!” the man in the wheelchair calls.

He ices the kid’s feet again. “Do that,” he says icily – _Really, must you? I’m stuck in here with you, you know_ – “and the next time I’ll hit your face, and then I’ll hit your face with my goddamn fist until you crack into a thousand pieces, and see if your speed helps you heal from that.”

“Joe, wait! Don’t shoot him!” another voice calls out.

He turns his head, just a little, and he sees the man at the door.

It’s _him._ Ronnie Raymond, the one who’s been hunting him.

“Why the hell not?!” Joe shouts angrily. “He’s hurting Barry.”

“He saved my life!” Ronnie exclaims, throwing himself in front of them, grabbing Joe and grappling his gun. “He saved my life, and he helped save the city, and I’m sure he has a good reason to do what he’s doing.”

“Ronnie!” the young woman shouts, sounding distressed. 

“He’s a goddamn criminal,” Joe shouts, fighting to pull the gun back. “There’s not an ounce of good in him.”

_I think, loath as I am to admit it, you might be the real one between us._

Then where the hell is Clarissa from? Or, hell, the science?

_I don’t know. I thought I was real, I really did..._

“Len?” Mick says, his eyes wide and abruptly worried. He rises to his knees. “Lenny, is that you? What happened to you?”

He’s abruptly aware of how dirty he is, how his hair has grown out another few inches, just short of starting to curl; how he hasn’t really paid much attention to baths because he keeps losing time. 

The man in the wheelchair is still watching. His eyes are still glittering. He is still unafraid.

He is still unafraid – except when he glances at Barry. 

Len bites his lip, and plays a hunch.

He takes three steps forward and presses the gun against the Streak’s – Barry’s – head, and he looks him in the eyes and winks with the eye that isn’t facing the man in the wheelchair, and then he says, “Sorry, kid. End of the road.”

Ronnie and Joe look up from their fight, eyes wide in horror. The young woman shrieks. Cisco shouts, “No!” Even Mick’s mouth gapes open, not in negation, but in a silent question of ‘why.’

Barry, looking straight at Len, frowns a little, clearly wondering what he’s up to.

He doesn’t think he’s going to die, the Flash; he trusts in Len’s little wink and Ronnie’s vouch for him.

Len’s not sure if it’s youthful bravado or hope and trust and optimism in the goodness of strangers or perhaps in fate. 

Len makes as though he’s going to push the trigger.

There’s lightning in the room.

And a blur of yellow.

Len was already turning to aim at him, finger pressing the trigger for real.

“The man in yellow!” Barry bellows.

“Doctor Wells!” the young woman screams, hands clenching futilely on the empty wheelchair.

Cisco scrambles to the desk. “I’m activating the therma-threading!” he shouts. “That’ll melt the ice!”

“You ruined my plans,” the vibrating man hisses, his voice dark and dangerous and Len’s gun is somewhere else and he’s being held up by his throat and his fingers are scrabbling there.

Mick scrambles to get his heat gun from where it’s on the desk, shouting, “Lenny! _Lenny!_ ” in a voice that sounds like his heart is breaking, but the vibrating man kicks him back, knocking him on the floor.

The Streak is shouting, frantic, vibrating at speed, his suit glowing, the ice melting, but it won’t be fast enough.

Ronnie gets the cold gun, but the second speedster knocks out of his hands, throwing it against the wall, carrying Len with him as if Len weighs only a feather. 

_I think - I'm afraid - that this is 'it' for us._

Yeah. Me too.

And then their hands are on fire again, and their head, too, just like always when they’re panicking, that stupid hallucination back again, except the speedster – a second speedster, he wasn’t expecting that, he thought he’d have a gun or something – is shouting in pain and letting go for some reason –

“Len,” Mick gasps, and his voice has changed. It’s still scared, still broken, but now there’s something else there. 

Awe.

Adoration.

Worship.

“Len,” he says again. “Len, you’re _on fire_.”

It’s not a hallucination?

_Wait. If that’s not a hallucination –_

Maybe the pills didn’t work because we weren’t schizophrenic.

_And perhaps we’re not the same person at all. Perhaps I really am me, and you are you. Perhaps the Particle Accelerator merged us or something – my Firestorm matrix mixing with the dark matter –_

That’s nice. Let’s discuss later.

Len lights his hands on fire and _throws_ it at the speedster. 

Mick has grabbed his gun now, crawled over, and he shoots it at him as well, and the speedster howls and runs forward and knocks them all back, but by that point the Streak is free.

But the Streak doesn’t run straight for the yellow speedster.

He runs for the cold gun.

The ice covers the second speedster from head to toe.

“I think I got him,” Barry pants.

“Ya _think_?” Cisco says. “Caitlin, will that kill – him?”

“If he’s a speedster like Barry,” the young woman, Caitlin, says briskly, clearly forcefully ignoring her horror, “then no; it’s just slowing him down.”

Len ignores them. “Mick,” he says, staring at his partner, who’s picking himself off from the floor and sliding his head gun into a very attractive thigh holster. Len misses him so much.

Mick reaches for him, and Len draws away. “No,” he says. “If the fire is real, then it’ll hurt you.”

He hesitates. “You all see the fire, right? It’s not just in my head?”

“Yeah,” Joe says. “We all see the fire.” He looks deeply shaken. “That was – that was the man in yellow.”

“Yeah,” Barry says grimly. “Yeah, it was.”

“Barry, your dad –”

“Is innocent,” Barry says. “Just like I always said.”

Man in yellow? Dad, Iron Heights, innocent –

“Wait,” Len says. “You’re _Doc Allen_ ’s kid? Really?”

Barry turns and gapes at him.

“What?” Len says defensively. “We were cellies, way back when. I used to read his mail, what he got from his kid.”

“You read my dad’s mail?!”

“There wasn’t anything else to read!”

“You’re a dick!” Barry says, but his eyes are starting to tear up. “Oh man. Oh man. If I’ve caught him –”

“Doc Allen can finally go free,” Mick says. “Good for him.”

“Leonard Snart?” Ronnie says hesitantly.

“Yeah, stalker-boy?” Len says.

Ronnie flushes and Caitlin barks a laugh, which she immediately covers her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispers.

“I just wanted to ask,” he says. “Is, uh – is Professor Martin Stein in there?”

_Yes. Yes! That’s me!_

“Oh, great,” Len says. “You gave him a name.”

_We already knew my name._

Only because we stalked Clarissa’s mailbox. And we didn’t know it was your name for sure. We couldn’t trust you about it.

_Well, it clearly is, so_ there.

Very mature.

“So he is?” Ronnie says, looking excited. “I knew it! I knew the Firestorm matrix must have merged into your systems – I’ve been working on a way to get the two of you apart –”

_Apart?_

Apart?

Holy shit, _apart._

_Yes. Absolutely yes. We should try out whatever this clearly intelligent young man has planned immediately._

So quick to get rid of me, huh?

_I suspect that you’re about to have a reunion with your husband, and I don’t want to be here for that._

Yeah, good point.

“Can you separate us?” he asks Ronnie.

Ronnie looks at Cisco.

“Uh, I mean, I have the device, we can give it a try,” Cisco says. “But first, can we discuss how Doctor Wells is secretly _evil_?”

“He’s not Wells,” Joe says. 

Everyone looks at him.

“Wells has an iron-clad alibi for the time of the death of Barry’s mother,” Joe says. “I’ve been – suspicious. For a while. Because of just how interested he is in Barry. But his story all checked out.”

“But, then – how?”

“I don’t know,” Joe says. “But conversations with numerous individuals who knew Harrison Wells before and after the accident that killed his wife all agree on one thing: the Harrison Wells from afterwards wasn’t the same man as before, and in ways that even grief has trouble explaining.”

“Have you searched the building?” Len asks Barry. “You have superspeed. You could do it.”

“What for?” Barry asks blankly. “You think he has some sort of secret hideway? Here?”

“I saw him walk into a wall downstairs,” Len offers. “When I broke into the building during the Accelerator explosion.”

“You did _what_?!” Mick says, looking horrified and pissed off the way he always does when he’s discovered one of Len’s stupid-crazy plans. 

And, yes, this time Len will admit his plan had been really stupid.

“Let’s put him in the Accelerator,” Barry says firmly. “And find the room.”

The room is –

_This is absolutely fascinating!_

I’m glad at least _one_ of us is enjoying this.

“Wells is from the _future_?!” Cisco yowls.

“Speedsters can _travel through time_?!” Barry yelps.

“You and Iris are _married_?!” Joe shouts.

“You know you’re still on fire?” Mick asks Len in a low tone. His eyes are a little glazed over. “It’s, uh. It’s really nice. Very pretty.”

_Your partner is a pyromaniac._

Did I not mention that?

_You did; it’s different being confronted with it directly like this. He also appears to have pyrophilia._

I think he just likes the idea of me not being able to burn.

_Mr. Snart. Look into your husband’s face. That is_ definitely _pyrophilia._

Len looks.

Hmm.

Okay, maybe the voice – maybe _Martin Stein_ – had a point.

_Of course I have a point. And just Stein is fine; I prefer it. Only my wife calls me Martin._

That’d be Clarissa, I take it.

_Yes. You know, I think we’re adjusting to the merger; our thoughts have increasingly untangled, yours to yours and mine to mine, and we haven’t had any movement issues in a while._

And we haven’t been able to do the memory sharing so much anymore.

_No, indeed. I think we’ll slowly be able to fade into a simple psychic bond._

Simple?!

_Well. Compared to before…_

Compared to the bit where we thought we had schizophrenia, you mean.

“Mick,” he says warningly when Mick reaches out to try to touch him.

“Oh, please,” Mick says. “Just a little.”

_We can try to make the fire lack heat._

Can we do that?

_I said we could try, not that we would necessarily succeed._

Len focuses, and Stein focuses, and when they feel like they’ve got something, Len gently reaches out and takes Mick’s hand in his.

The flame beats against Mick’s fingers harmlessly.

Mick swallows, hard, and stares. “Lenny,” he marvels. “Lenny, look at you. You’re the Burning Man.”

Uh, Stein, I don’t suppose –

_First let’s figure out if I can block out my awareness of what’s going on first, thank you._

Right. And separate, too, if we can.

_That would be even better._

Len clears his throat. “Can we talk about getting me and Stein separated?”

“Uh, sure,” Barry says. “Thanks for your help, uncovering Wells and all.”

“Happy to help,” Len drawls. 

“Did you have to frost Barry for it to work?” Cisco asks.

“I was trying to rescue my partner,” Len says reasonably. “I didn’t realize about your Wells.”

“Wait,” Barry says. “But you winked at me!”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Len explains. “No reason; I don’t kill unless it’s necessary – I never liked the heat. Besides, Stein’s squeamish –”

_If it means you don’t kill people, then yes, I’m squeamish!_

“Anyway, I just saw that he was really, really calm for a guy in a wheelchair, is all,” Len continues. “The only thing that worried him were threats to Barry.”

“Because he needed Barry for his evil plan to return to the future,” Cisco says. “And I can’t believe that was a sentence that came out of my mouth.”

“Is that necessarily an evil plan?” Caitlin asks, gnawing on her lip. “If he just wanted to go home…”

“He came to the past to try to wipe Barry out of existence,” Cisco points out. “His notes indicate that he thought that succeeding could mean that he cause a miniature quasi-black hole – not a real one, or we’d all _really_ be screwed - to be formed here, destroying Central City and everyone in it –”

“Say,” Len interrupts before Cisco can go into too much detail. “While you’re looking up anti-speedster tech ideas, can we pause for a second and see if there’s anything in that doohickey about me?”

“About you?”

“About me and Stein, I mean,” he says. “Us separating.”

“Yes, Mr. Snart,” the AI they’ve managed to access chirps. “You and Professor Stein are called Firestorm when joined together. Your power set includes –”

They listen.

“Hold up,” Joe says. “What was that about _nuclear power_?”

_I’m more concerned about the part that said that we will deteriorate into an explosive material when separated for too long._

Guess you’re not rid of me yet.

_To be perfectly honest, Mr. Snart, I don’t know what I’d do without you by now._

Go back to your normal life.

_What, and give up flying and minor criminal activity?_

Hey! It’ll be _major_ criminal activity, now that I know we aren’t schizophrenic and inclined to break down while on a job.

_Then I must object –_

“So you’re going to help us, right?” Barry says anxiously.

_What?_

“Huh?” Len says aloud.

“If we put Wells in prison,” Barry says, looking at them with big wide puppy eyes. “And if we get the thing to separate and stabilize you to work, then, maybe, could you stay and help? We need a main scientist - plus, you know, extra firepower - to help us fight the metas. They’ll destroy Central City if we don’t stop them.”

“Actually,” Len says, putting aside Barry’s absolutely ridiculous suggestion for the time being – and judging by Joe’s face, he agrees that it’s ridiculous, “let’s talk about your definition of ‘prison’ first. And about a few things I’d like to call, in order: the Geneva Convention, the Constitution, and Missouri state law. Do you know what all those things have in common?”

“Uh,” Cisco says. “No?”

“ _You’re violating all of them!_ ”

Mick laughs.

It takes two days for the separator to be finished. 

Two very long days, given that Stein absolutely refuses to let Len and Mick get on with their reunion until he’s out of there.

(He’s left the door open on potentially joining up and then shutting away his mind to let Mick enjoy the flames, but only if Len will agree to Barry’s ridiculous plan of becoming Team Flash’s new mentors. Mick – who had initially objected to the idea of becoming ‘heroes’ – suddenly changed sides on the debate when he heard the offer. He’s _such_ a pyrophiliac.)

Not being able to screw did mean that they actually had to _talk_ about it.

“I shouldn’t have left,” Len tells Mick without looking at him.

“I shouldn’t have gotten distracted,” Mick says, also not looking at Len.

“Not your fault,” Len says. “It happened so suddenly. It just went up. I know the risks, with you; I shouldn’t have taken you in there at all. I don’t hold it against you at all.”

“And I don’t hold you leaving against you,” Mick says. “Well, not anymore. You got scared, and you ran. You were trying to defend yourself.”

“Still –”

_Oh for God’s sake, just forgive each other already._

Len snorts.

“What’d our guest say?” Mick says, turning to look at Len for the first time in this conversation.

“That we should forgive each other already,” Len says.

“I can do that,” Mick says.

“No more feelings talk for at least another few years,” Len agrees, and then Mick is there, right there, right in front of him, back again, _partners_ again – 

_I take it back! Go back to being angry at each other!_

Len snorts against Mick’s lips. 

“Lemme guess,” Mick says, pulling back a little from where he’s holding Len close. “He’s complaining.”

Len hums in agreement and kisses Mick again – ignoring Stein’s theatrical groan – and then pulls away. “Soon,” he says.

“I’m going to go encourage Cisco and Ronnie to work faster,” Mick says.

“You do that,” Len says, and goes for check-up number a thousand from Caitlin.

(Wells is still defrosting. Caitlin estimates a full defrost will take three days, the countdown to which restarted yesterday because Len was feeling grumpy and didn’t want everyone’s attention to go away from _fixing him_.)

Oh, and Lisa shows up to yell at Len, but he was expecting that. He wasn’t expecting her and Cisco to hit it off quite so well, but hey, if she’s happy, he’s happy. 

If the device works and he’s not schizophrenic and not joined together with Stein anymore, _everyone’s_ going to be happy.

They put on the device.

Something just _clicks_ into place.

Pulling apart is – 

It’s _easy_. They just step apart, as if they’ve always known how to do it. And then they step together, hand in hand, and they’re one again. Then apart.

“So we just have to do that regularly, huh?” Len says to Stein, studying the older man’s features even as Stein studies his.

“Yes,” Stein says. “It appears so.”

“Guess we might as well stick around here, then,” Len says. “Wouldn’t want these idiots to get into trouble without us.”

Stein smiles. “I think we’ll be able to find enough adrenaline to keep even you interested,” he says.

“Len,” Mick says from the door.

“I’m going to go find Clarissa,” Stein says hastily, and heads out.

Len takes a step closer to his partner, then another. Mick’s eyes are fixed on him, his pupils already blown, and it doesn’t matter that Len can’t light on fire without Stein, not at all, because Mick wants him just the way he is right now.

The only question, really, is if they’re going to make it to the safehouse – any but the one on Maple, for which he’s already handed the lease over to the artist’s collective and pre-paid their taxes for a few years – or if they’re just going to fall down right here on the floor of the lab –

Judging by Mick’s face and Len’s quickening breath, they’re not going to make it to the safehouse –

“Uh, guys?” Cisco’s voice pipes up through the intercom. “I think we have a problem. A…monkey problem.”

“Technically,” Catilin chimes in, “I think he’s a gorilla.”

“I think he has _mind control powers_ ,” Barry says.

Len and Mick look at each other.

“Safehouse,” they say at the same time.

Team Flash’s emergencies can wait until tomorrow. 

Ronnie ends up in charge of the cold gun. He mostly uses it against speedsters and as a high powered fire extinguisher when Len and Mick get too fire-happy. When accompanied by Caitlin’s later development of frost powers, they’re officially the chillest couple on the block.

(Cisco and Len high-five while everyone else groans.)


End file.
